In a million years people might start adjusting the orbital speed of the earth to fix this. Or they might redefine the second to be a few more cesium transitions.
Personally I think it's a little far off to guess what we are going to be doing.
Mass = Volume * density Mass = Pi * (R ^ 2) * H * D So Mass = 3.14 * (10.0 +/-.05) ^ 4 Mass = 38166.9 to 25576.5 Or Mass = 3.1416 * (10.0 +/-.05) ^ 4 Mass = 38186.34 to 25588.53
You can't just say well I started with 3 digits so I will end up with 3 digits. Using 3.14 vs. 3.1416 reduces your accuracy without you noticing it. It's much better to use four 3 digit numbers and one 5 digit number than it is to use four 3 digit numbers. 3.14 +/-.002 = PI which is almost 4 digits of accuracy which is why it's not as obvious for little things but it all adds up.
2 and 3. North + South America + Africa + Australia vs an empire that stretched from the China Sea to the Danube River in Europe.
First to climb Everest (May 29,1953) first to go to north and south poles.
First powered flight, first jet, first super sonic flight, first to land on moon.
I have to give Europe printing both sides used this Europe used this first with clay tablets and where the first to put it to practical use.
Explosive weapons: AD 900s - grenades, mines, bombs, etc. = China, Nukes + VX + mustard gass + TNT = Europe.
Radio, TV, Computer, Semi Conductor, steam engine = Europe. vs. Invented matches: AD 557
China got a lot of the early inventions but most of these early inventions where discovered in several places but never put to much use. When it comes to the industrial revolution and most of the useful inventions in the world you have to go with US + Europe.
PS: Mechanical clock? AD 800s that seems really late there are many examples of time peaces before this such as a container with a hole in the center which fills with water after a given time period. Europe got first accurate timepiece (useful for navigation), atomic clock, and GPS.
C = 11.05 * 3.14 = 34.697
C = 11.15 * 3.14 = 35.011
Vs:
C = 11.05 * 3.141592 = 34.715
C = 11.15 * 3.141592 = 35.029
Now some might say that's no big deal but you just lost real accuracy when you used 3.14 vs 3.141592. When your working "in the real world" you need to keep track of your tolerances and using approximations makes you less accurate. AKA: (A+/-.5%) * (B +/-.5%) = C +/- 1% NOT C +/-.05%.
I'm not certain, of course, but I think now is the time to seize it and fusion is a damn good gamble.
Agree. US gov spends ~3,000billion a year this project will take ~1billion / year. I don't mind a 00.033% increase in my taxes if they spend money on this. But I guess someone might.
The human body has some "great" defenses for cancer.
Take skin cancer one of the basic defenses is pigment. Your average "white" guy will tan given moderate exposure to the sun reducing the damage it does. But, if it's so helpful why is everyone not black? Well because at low doses other factors outweigh the benefits of having a tan. On the other extreme "black" people can also tan.
Biologically there is a huge variety in human pigments. Some people like me can tan and get freckles while others have great difficulty gaining a tan. But luckily for them there are many other defense systems.
This simplest is for damage cells to simply die off. But radiation can damage this mechanism. So with sunburn you have huge numbers of cells dieing off as they react to damage and large numbers of cells being created to take their place. With repeated burns you can have a single starting cell replicated a lot, which can lead to cancer if it has been damaged. However, with low-level exposure it's much less likely that a single cell will have to split anywhere near that much so there is a much lower chance for damaged cells to show up in large quantities ready for other mutations to create cancer.
Now both of these work together so consistent exposure tends to create an appropriate tan and thus leading to low levels of exposure which allows the body to better deal with damage.
PS: This has been greatly simplified. My best guess is their are well over 20 different areas in our DNA that control pigment. Thus "white" is different from albino but as to the basic mechanisms I think I explained why it's more complex than a simple X change per hour of exposure till you get skin cancer.
It's a billing isue building "huge" power plants let's the power company be more effecent in some ways but the furter that power goes the more transmission losses they get so they need to seperate the generation of power from the people using it so they know where to expand capasity for the best bang for the buck as it where.
Also if a power plant in New York is selling power to DC where they set the meter will change the useage picture so they look at supply as how much power is going to be supplyed to a specific location. The simple fact is the grid seperates the use of power from the generation of power to such an extent that you realy can't tell how much of any one plant's power is lost from transmission isues.
There are basicly 3 players in power the guys that make it the guys that send it around and the guys who use it and somone might do a little of all three they can generate 500MW buy 500MW use 300MW sell 650MW and lose 50MW but they guy selling the power does not care if he is losing that 50MW and the guys useing that 650MW don't care so he hase to eat the cost.
By seperating the generation from useage they can get an accurate picture of what's going on and so they can say to the generation people I will pay you 9.801c per MW at location A and 9.701c per MW at location B.
Accidental Deaths - United States - 1994-1998 from http://hazmat.dot.gov/riskmgmt/riskcompare.htm says 0.7 deaths per 100 million aircraft miles making the shuttle
~1,135 * as safe per passenger mile.
Using 1 death per 167,611,852,800 miles for the shuttle.
I can see deaths per miles flown (makes shuttles look vary safe)*
Accidents per takeoff and landing (1 / 113) and (1/112) which makes it seem safe. (Yea you still die on the second one but you got to spend a few days in space.)
Accidents per flight (2/113) at which point I know a lot of people who still would risk it.
But deaths per flight that's just odd.
PS: Don't know total miles flown but 14 deaths per ~7 people per trip * 112 trips * over 5 days a trip * 24 h / day * 17,321 mi/h = better than 14deaths/ 2 346 565 939 200 miles = 1 death per 167,611,852,800 miles vs.
13 / (10,547,000 flights * 200?(probably much lower but it's a safe number to use ) people per flight * ~ 1000 miles per flight) or 1 death in 162 261 538 400 miles. Which would conservatively make the shuttle a little safer per passenger mile than aircraft on a good year. (Some years a lot more than 13 people die in civil aviation. ~500 in 01 for example.)
Big Oil wants you to increase your efficiency so you increase the value of their oil and keep paying for it over time. A tank of gas is worth more in an 80MPG car than a 30MPG car. Big oil loves the idea of everyone buying tiny cars and paying ever more money for their diminishing oil supplies for the next 100 years.
When fusion shows up and Oil become worthless then Exxon is out of business but they can keep selling gas in a "Wind" economy.
If Oil prices go up then you start using other things in place of oil. You can make gas out of coal easily. Plastics out of vegetable oil. As to fertilizers well start dredging up any major river and you can get plenty of soil. Last I heard America would be fine with farming ~25% of the land we do now or being 25% as efficient with our land as we are now.
You basically drop all beef production and start getting 10x as much food instead of that beef. Chicken is not as bad but by going to soy products you can get insanely more efficient food production. Of course we would also stop exporting food...
Think of it this way. "All jet craft will stop functioning in 6 months." Ok now how much damage would that really do? I can still send email and you use trains / cars for freight anyway so what harm is that going to do? Umm, vacation destinations will be harmed at that's about it. O an no over night mail the horror!
Oil is vary cheep and plentiful but it's hardly irreplaceable.
Umm, Computers, First Nukes, H-Bomb, Transistor, Graphical User Interface, Rockets... Looks like for most "large" engendering projects having one big team works best.
I can't think of any large novel engineering projects where several competing teams was all that fast. Once you need to build something large you need to pool all available recourses and start building as fast as possible.
While your not far off you still miss the boat when you compare PC gaming with consoles.
First off I don't have a TV so a 200$ video card is a lot cheaper than a PS2 + TV+ Memory cards + extra controllers... Now this might not seem like a fair comparison, but you can get a good gaming PC with monitor for less than an X-BOX + PS2 + Game Cube + TV so console gaming is not really cheaper it's just people discount the real costs.
People who like to play the numbers game by just comparing a single console to a PC also gloss over the fact that console games cost ~10$ more than their PC counterparts. Thus the more games you buy the more that console costs you. (Your subsidizing the people who buy a console and don't get vary many games.)
PC gaming also has a large selection of "free" online games that go from stupid flash games to GNU chess. You can say that PC games are based around a keyboard but you can get a wide verity of controllers for a PC.
The only advantage to console gaming is some "party" games but a LAN party of Doom III or a good RTS is still fun. I wish they where still making games like Diablo II and Star Craft for LAN party's but you can still play the classics even if they are getting a little dated. I have yet to see a console game that lets you play a RTS game vs. other humans and console MMO's suck so I think PC gaming more than makes up for this.
PS: I am probably going to pick up a Revolution, but I still think PC gaming is less expensive and more fun than keeping up with console gaming.
Drop Alaska and the Midwest and rerun those numbers.
We need to try building a system that connects the major US cities. Start with a Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond. Build a San Diego, Los Angeles, to San Francisco Link. Then add a Seattle Portland Link. And a Chicago - Detroit Link. Add an Orlando - Miami Link. Then start connecting these systems. So you connect Orlando to Richmond and Chicago/Detroit to New York. You now have Sections of track linking Seattle to Sand Diego and a Chicago/New York to Miami, which will cause other city's to want to join those networks.
I think a system that links most major Cities in the US with 2 - 3 other cities would start to pay for it's self vary quickly. Just look at the metro around DC once you have a system adding a few more stations starts to look vary appealing even if building a system from scratch seems to costly you only need to start with the profitable connections and work from there. In time there might not be a direct connection between Chicago and Seattle but that's no reason why you can't connect New York with DC and start the ball rolling.
Over time you can add some express lines that do 8 - 12 hour links and these systems could become vary high demand. You're not going to have the aircraft security issues and lots of people dislikes flying in cramped seating so this type of transit system could prove vary profitable.
You don't need to connect to downtown either. A simple Metro station gets you into a major city without messing with inner city systems.
Wow that's low. There is a tradeoff between cheep limiting yourself to "perfectly" parallel code so 15W per node seems extremely low but I guess they know what their doing.
Anyway, do you know of any chart that keeps track of a top 500-type list that includes things like ongoing costs and performance on highly interconnected simulations?
PS: Thanks for that info where did you find that out?
The space shuttle design is not based around doing any one thing well, but it's hardly a total waste of money.
The main advantage to the shuttle was it was available, versatile, and complex.
The simple fact that it's their makes it better than every replacement ever designed. Yes, it's expensive to use but with a 98% chance of working every time it's much more likely to be funded than some project trying to get off the drawing board. And without sending things into space we are not going to learn how to make it cheep and safe to start exploiting the recourses out there.
Versatility might seem like a waste but it's only after you have a tool that can do something that you learn how useful it is. Taking stuff back from orbit may be next to useless but if the Shuttle could not do this than you can bet every one of its replacements would be designed around that capability. Docking with stuff in orbit was varying useful but it's also easy which is why the next gen systems are all about separating crew from cargo. It's going to be a hassle to keep docking every mission but we learned an integrated system is not the best approach.
It's also complex which might not seem like a good thing but without that level of complexity we would not have learned how to deal with complex spacecraft. We learned the hardest part was getting the people at the top to understand when one guy says his 0 ring is not going to work when things are cold then you need to listen to him. The shuttle never failed in space. Most new systems are going to be multi staged to orbit but now we know what light things can do when they break off at high speeds. If every ship had been a simple rocket it would not have been a problem but the best multi stage to orbit systems will have wings so learning to keep them safe was a vary valuable lesion.
We should stop using the shuttle but it's best to remember what it has gotten us. When so many replacements have been cut there is huge value in proven designs. I think the best system is going to be based around an air breathing winged first stage but that's not a proven system so for now lets stick with big old rockets and get back up their.
PS: Some people said that we could have sent a second Hubble up for the cost of fixing the old one but it's best to recall the first one did not work. You can't say "well as you can see part of my plain is to not fail so it's going to work." Complex systems will fail and it's only though trail and error that NASA started monitoring things as they landed on mars because while saving that weight for an extra instrument might have been useful knowing how they messed up turned out to be the most valuable lesson from many of the mars missions to date.
Now I lean to the right on a lot of issues but I still find FOX way over the top. Take 15min of fox news and count the number statements or uses of inflection with obvious bias. Now compare that with 15min of CNN.
CNN 2 right 1 left
FOX 43 all right
FOX was bout as a means of spreading right wing propaganda and it's been doing that ever since. Yes it's a free country but once the news becomes so biased the country stops being free. You need to debate some issues to make an informed decision vs. spouting propaganda to get votes.
When was the last time someone said "Spending more on our military than the rest of the world put together seems extreme." it's all about "let's protect us from them" without a clear definition of who they are and how and why they are going to hurt us.
On the other hand when was the last time someone suggested reducing the insane subsidies to farmers in the US?
Sure people talk about the abortion issue but most Republicans would not vote for a constitutional amendment to change that unless they knew it would not pass.
Look at all the people going from government jobs to the private sector and guess how many "dirty deals" are really going on.
People talk about strengthening the US economy but when was the last time someone built a major road in the US? Congestion in the US has gotten worse over the last 10 years everywhere but nobody will talk about it. Things are going down hill fast but hey let's "leave no child behind" and "fight terror" which means what? O yea smoke and mirrors my friend some and mirrors.
What I want to see is the list of ongoing costs. I see a tun of PIV's on the list but I wonder how much more it costs to use those PIV's say Athlon 64's ect. Every extra watt adds up.
At ~10c per kilowatt hour * 95% uptime = 0.83$ / watt per CPU / year. So ~100w CPU * 65,000 CPU's * 3 years * 2 (AC costs) = around 3.2 mill on energy costs.
Not that I expect them to dump the system in 3 years but the energy costs to run a system like that stop being worth it after a few years and then it's time to upgrade.
Tacking is not hard around a star if you have a reflective sail because of gravity.
Starting from earth / orbit you have 3 degrees of freedom. You might want to go above / below the plane of the ecliptic. You can do that by angling a reflective sail so light bounces off and below the plane if you want to go up or reverse that to go down.
You are all ready orbiting so going left right is really a question of waiting or entering a higher / lower orbit waiting a while and then going back to your old orbit.
To enter a lower orbit you reduce your orbital speed by reflecting light ahead of you. To enter a higher orbit you reflect light behind you.
If they want to leave orbit you reflect light at an extreme angle so it's still behind you but mostly it's away from the star. For interstellar voyages it might be useful to get into a comet like orbit and then accelerate as fast as you can on the last trip out of the system. (This assumes your only using the sun if you have a laser pushing you out of the system then it may not be needed.)
If 300$ is stopping development then there are other major problems.
The cost of employing a good developer is well over 120k/year. Wages + Benefits + SS + office space + PC +...
Now if your talking about a true startup then sure software costs can seem vary important but every business has startup costs. One of the first things I would tell any startup is BUY PHOTOSHOP! Why? Well in the end the reason why your company succeeds or fails will come down to efficiency. It's easy to spend more time trying to figure out if you can get buy with cheep stuff than the cost of buying the best product. This does not mean you should buy 1000$ office chairs, but when it comes to your tools buying the "best" is going to be worth it.
I have written simple web hosting software. And if the only packages out there cost 1000+$ I would have easly sold what I wrote for say 5$ a copy so there would have been "cheep" web hosting solutions out there.
One cost of opensource software is the reduction in such projects. Yes most software costs losts of cash now but that's because the only people left willing to pay for software are company's who don't realy care if it costs 100$ or 5$ is about the same when your paying the guy using it 30$ an hour. With Pearl on the market there is not enough room left for somone to make cheep software that does about the same thing.
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In a million years people might start adjusting the orbital speed of the earth to fix this. Or they might redefine the second to be a few more cesium transitions.
Personally I think it's a little far off to guess what we are going to be doing.
You lose accuracy when you do math.
.05 .05 .05
.05) ^ 4 .05) ^ 4
.002 = PI which is almost 4 digits of accuracy which is why it's not as obvious for little things but it all adds up.
Let's say you have a gear which you would like to know it's mass.
Density = 10.0 +/-
Height = 10.0 +/-
Radius = 10.0 +/-
Mass = Volume * density
Mass = Pi * (R ^ 2) * H * D
So
Mass = 3.14 * (10.0 +/-
Mass = 38166.9 to 25576.5
Or
Mass = 3.1416 * (10.0 +/-
Mass = 38186.34 to 25588.53
You can't just say well I started with 3 digits so I will end up with 3 digits. Using 3.14 vs. 3.1416 reduces your accuracy without you noticing it. It's much better to use four 3 digit numbers and one 5 digit number than it is to use four 3 digit numbers. 3.14 +/-
2 and 3. North + South America + Africa + Australia vs an empire that stretched from the China Sea to the Danube River in Europe.
First to climb Everest (May 29,1953) first to go to north and south poles.
First powered flight, first jet, first super sonic flight, first to land on moon.
I have to give Europe printing both sides used this Europe used this first with clay tablets and where the first to put it to practical use.
Explosive weapons: AD 900s - grenades, mines, bombs, etc. = China, Nukes + VX + mustard gass + TNT = Europe.
Radio, TV, Computer, Semi Conductor, steam engine = Europe. vs. Invented matches: AD 557
China got a lot of the early inventions but most of these early inventions where discovered in several places but never put to much use. When it comes to the industrial revolution and most of the useful inventions in the world you have to go with US + Europe.
PS: Mechanical clock? AD 800s that seems really late there are many examples of time peaces before this such as a container with a hole in the center which fills with water after a given time period. Europe got first accurate timepiece (useful for navigation), atomic clock, and GPS.
C = pi * D.
.05
.5%) * (B +/- .5%) = C +/- 1% NOT C +/- .05%.
D = 11.1 +/-
C = 11.05 * 3.14 = 34.697
C = 11.15 * 3.14 = 35.011
Vs:
C = 11.05 * 3.141592 = 34.715
C = 11.15 * 3.141592 = 35.029
Now some might say that's no big deal but you just lost real accuracy when you used 3.14 vs 3.141592. When your working "in the real world" you need to keep track of your tolerances and using approximations makes you less accurate. AKA: (A+/-
0 / 3 = 0 : (42) .33 : (69) .66 : (69)
...
1 / 3 =
2 / 3 =
57 / 3 = 19 : (42)
58 / 3 = 19.333 : (69)
59 / 3 = 19.666 : (69)
60 * 60 = 3600 : (69)
20 * 42 + 40 * 69 = 3600
Looks like it works to me.
I'm not certain, of course, but I think now is the time to seize it and fusion is a damn good gamble.
Agree. US gov spends ~3,000billion a year this project will take ~1billion / year. I don't mind a 00.033% increase in my taxes if they spend money on this. But I guess someone might.
The human body has some "great" defenses for cancer.
Take skin cancer one of the basic defenses is pigment. Your average "white" guy will tan given moderate exposure to the sun reducing the damage it does. But, if it's so helpful why is everyone not black? Well because at low doses other factors outweigh the benefits of having a tan. On the other extreme "black" people can also tan.
Biologically there is a huge variety in human pigments. Some people like me can tan and get freckles while others have great difficulty gaining a tan. But luckily for them there are many other defense systems.
This simplest is for damage cells to simply die off. But radiation can damage this mechanism. So with sunburn you have huge numbers of cells dieing off as they react to damage and large numbers of cells being created to take their place. With repeated burns you can have a single starting cell replicated a lot, which can lead to cancer if it has been damaged. However, with low-level exposure it's much less likely that a single cell will have to split anywhere near that much so there is a much lower chance for damaged cells to show up in large quantities ready for other mutations to create cancer.
Now both of these work together so consistent exposure tends to create an appropriate tan and thus leading to low levels of exposure which allows the body to better deal with damage.
PS: This has been greatly simplified. My best guess is their are well over 20 different areas in our DNA that control pigment. Thus "white" is different from albino but as to the basic mechanisms I think I explained why it's more complex than a simple X change per hour of exposure till you get skin cancer.
It's a billing isue building "huge" power plants let's the power company be more effecent in some ways but the furter that power goes the more transmission losses they get so they need to seperate the generation of power from the people using it so they know where to expand capasity for the best bang for the buck as it where.
Also if a power plant in New York is selling power to DC where they set the meter will change the useage picture so they look at supply as how much power is going to be supplyed to a specific location. The simple fact is the grid seperates the use of power from the generation of power to such an extent that you realy can't tell how much of any one plant's power is lost from transmission isues.
There are basicly 3 players in power the guys that make it the guys that send it around and the guys who use it and somone might do a little of all three they can generate 500MW buy 500MW use 300MW sell 650MW and lose 50MW but they guy selling the power does not care if he is losing that 50MW and the guys useing that 650MW don't care so he hase to eat the cost. By seperating the generation from useage they can get an accurate picture of what's going on and so they can say to the generation people I will pay you 9.801c per MW at location A and 9.701c per MW at location B.
Accidental Deaths - United States - 1994-1998 from http://hazmat.dot.gov/riskmgmt/riskcompare.htm says 0.7 deaths per 100 million aircraft miles making the shuttle ~1,135 * as safe per passenger mile.
Using 1 death per 167,611,852,800 miles for the shuttle.
That's an odd way to look at the numbers.
I can see deaths per miles flown (makes shuttles look vary safe)*
Accidents per takeoff and landing (1 / 113) and (1/112) which makes it seem safe. (Yea you still die on the second one but you got to spend a few days in space.)
Accidents per flight (2/113) at which point I know a lot of people who still would risk it.
But deaths per flight that's just odd.
PS: Don't know total miles flown but 14 deaths per ~7 people per trip * 112 trips * over 5 days a trip * 24 h / day * 17,321 mi/h = better than 14deaths/ 2 346 565 939 200 miles = 1 death per 167,611,852,800 miles vs.
13 / (10,547,000 flights * 200?(probably much lower but it's a safe number to use ) people per flight * ~ 1000 miles per flight) or 1 death in 162 261 538 400 miles. Which would conservatively make the shuttle a little safer per passenger mile than aircraft on a good year. (Some years a lot more than 13 people die in civil aviation. ~500 in 01 for example.)
We have 200+ years worth of coal + fission energy so using a lot of energy to extract oil can still be worth it.
It's from (T) transmission losses.
G = Power plant A produces X MW
C = Consumption = Total energy uses at the meter.
G - C = T
G - C - E (export) + I(Import) = T
Big Oil wants you to increase your efficiency so you increase the value of their oil and keep paying for it over time. A tank of gas is worth more in an 80MPG car than a 30MPG car. Big oil loves the idea of everyone buying tiny cars and paying ever more money for their diminishing oil supplies for the next 100 years.
When fusion shows up and Oil become worthless then Exxon is out of business but they can keep selling gas in a "Wind" economy.
Peak Oil means what?
If Oil prices go up then you start using other things in place of oil. You can make gas out of coal easily. Plastics out of vegetable oil. As to fertilizers well start dredging up any major river and you can get plenty of soil. Last I heard America would be fine with farming ~25% of the land we do now or being 25% as efficient with our land as we are now.
You basically drop all beef production and start getting 10x as much food instead of that beef. Chicken is not as bad but by going to soy products you can get insanely more efficient food production. Of course we would also stop exporting food...
Think of it this way. "All jet craft will stop functioning in 6 months." Ok now how much damage would that really do? I can still send email and you use trains / cars for freight anyway so what harm is that going to do? Umm, vacation destinations will be harmed at that's about it. O an no over night mail the horror!
Oil is vary cheep and plentiful but it's hardly irreplaceable.
Umm, Computers, First Nukes, H-Bomb, Transistor, Graphical User Interface, Rockets ... Looks like for most "large" engendering projects having one big team works best.
I can't think of any large novel engineering projects where several competing teams was all that fast. Once you need to build something large you need to pool all available recourses and start building as fast as possible.
While your not far off you still miss the boat when you compare PC gaming with consoles.
First off I don't have a TV so a 200$ video card is a lot cheaper than a PS2 + TV+ Memory cards + extra controllers... Now this might not seem like a fair comparison, but you can get a good gaming PC with monitor for less than an X-BOX + PS2 + Game Cube + TV so console gaming is not really cheaper it's just people discount the real costs.
People who like to play the numbers game by just comparing a single console to a PC also gloss over the fact that console games cost ~10$ more than their PC counterparts. Thus the more games you buy the more that console costs you. (Your subsidizing the people who buy a console and don't get vary many games.)
PC gaming also has a large selection of "free" online games that go from stupid flash games to GNU chess. You can say that PC games are based around a keyboard but you can get a wide verity of controllers for a PC.
The only advantage to console gaming is some "party" games but a LAN party of Doom III or a good RTS is still fun. I wish they where still making games like Diablo II and Star Craft for LAN party's but you can still play the classics even if they are getting a little dated. I have yet to see a console game that lets you play a RTS game vs. other humans and console MMO's suck so I think PC gaming more than makes up for this.
PS: I am probably going to pick up a Revolution, but I still think PC gaming is less expensive and more fun than keeping up with console gaming.
Drop Alaska and the Midwest and rerun those numbers.
/Detroit to New York. You now have Sections of track linking Seattle to Sand Diego and a Chicago/New York to Miami, which will cause other city's to want to join those networks.
We need to try building a system that connects the major US cities. Start with a Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond. Build a San Diego, Los Angeles, to San Francisco Link. Then add a Seattle Portland Link. And a Chicago - Detroit Link. Add an Orlando - Miami Link. Then start connecting these systems. So you connect Orlando to Richmond and Chicago
I think a system that links most major Cities in the US with 2 - 3 other cities would start to pay for it's self vary quickly. Just look at the metro around DC once you have a system adding a few more stations starts to look vary appealing even if building a system from scratch seems to costly you only need to start with the profitable connections and work from there. In time there might not be a direct connection between Chicago and Seattle but that's no reason why you can't connect New York with DC and start the ball rolling.
Over time you can add some express lines that do 8 - 12 hour links and these systems could become vary high demand. You're not going to have the aircraft security issues and lots of people dislikes flying in cramped seating so this type of transit system could prove vary profitable.
You don't need to connect to downtown either. A simple Metro station gets you into a major city without messing with inner city systems.
Wow that's low. There is a tradeoff between cheep limiting yourself to "perfectly" parallel code so 15W per node seems extremely low but I guess they know what their doing.
Anyway, do you know of any chart that keeps track of a top 500-type list that includes things like ongoing costs and performance on highly interconnected simulations?
PS: Thanks for that info where did you find that out?
The space shuttle design is not based around doing any one thing well, but it's hardly a total waste of money.
The main advantage to the shuttle was it was available, versatile, and complex.
The simple fact that it's their makes it better than every replacement ever designed. Yes, it's expensive to use but with a 98% chance of working every time it's much more likely to be funded than some project trying to get off the drawing board. And without sending things into space we are not going to learn how to make it cheep and safe to start exploiting the recourses out there.
Versatility might seem like a waste but it's only after you have a tool that can do something that you learn how useful it is. Taking stuff back from orbit may be next to useless but if the Shuttle could not do this than you can bet every one of its replacements would be designed around that capability. Docking with stuff in orbit was varying useful but it's also easy which is why the next gen systems are all about separating crew from cargo. It's going to be a hassle to keep docking every mission but we learned an integrated system is not the best approach.
It's also complex which might not seem like a good thing but without that level of complexity we would not have learned how to deal with complex spacecraft. We learned the hardest part was getting the people at the top to understand when one guy says his 0 ring is not going to work when things are cold then you need to listen to him. The shuttle never failed in space. Most new systems are going to be multi staged to orbit but now we know what light things can do when they break off at high speeds. If every ship had been a simple rocket it would not have been a problem but the best multi stage to orbit systems will have wings so learning to keep them safe was a vary valuable lesion.
We should stop using the shuttle but it's best to remember what it has gotten us. When so many replacements have been cut there is huge value in proven designs. I think the best system is going to be based around an air breathing winged first stage but that's not a proven system so for now lets stick with big old rockets and get back up their.
PS: Some people said that we could have sent a second Hubble up for the cost of fixing the old one but it's best to recall the first one did not work. You can't say "well as you can see part of my plain is to not fail so it's going to work." Complex systems will fail and it's only though trail and error that NASA started monitoring things as they landed on mars because while saving that weight for an extra instrument might have been useful knowing how they messed up turned out to be the most valuable lesson from many of the mars missions to date.
Now I lean to the right on a lot of issues but I still find FOX way over the top. Take 15min of fox news and count the number statements or uses of inflection with obvious bias. Now compare that with 15min of CNN.
CNN 2 right 1 left
FOX 43 all right
FOX was bout as a means of spreading right wing propaganda and it's been doing that ever since. Yes it's a free country but once the news becomes so biased the country stops being free. You need to debate some issues to make an informed decision vs. spouting propaganda to get votes.
The left right debate in this country is silly.
When was the last time someone said "Spending more on our military than the rest of the world put together seems extreme." it's all about "let's protect us from them" without a clear definition of who they are and how and why they are going to hurt us.
On the other hand when was the last time someone suggested reducing the insane subsidies to farmers in the US?
Sure people talk about the abortion issue but most Republicans would not vote for a constitutional amendment to change that unless they knew it would not pass.
Look at all the people going from government jobs to the private sector and guess how many "dirty deals" are really going on.
People talk about strengthening the US economy but when was the last time someone built a major road in the US? Congestion in the US has gotten worse over the last 10 years everywhere but nobody will talk about it. Things are going down hill fast but hey let's "leave no child behind" and "fight terror" which means what? O yea smoke and mirrors my friend some and mirrors.
What I want to see is the list of ongoing costs. I see a tun of PIV's on the list but I wonder how much more it costs to use those PIV's say Athlon 64's ect. Every extra watt adds up.
At ~10c per kilowatt hour * 95% uptime = 0.83$ / watt per CPU / year.
So ~100w CPU * 65,000 CPU's * 3 years * 2 (AC costs) = around 3.2 mill on energy costs.
Not that I expect them to dump the system in 3 years but the energy costs to run a system like that stop being worth it after a few years and then it's time to upgrade.
Tacking is not hard around a star if you have a reflective sail because of gravity.
Starting from earth / orbit you have 3 degrees of freedom. You might want to go above / below the plane of the ecliptic. You can do that by angling a reflective sail so light bounces off and below the plane if you want to go up or reverse that to go down.
You are all ready orbiting so going left right is really a question of waiting or entering a higher / lower orbit waiting a while and then going back to your old orbit.
To enter a lower orbit you reduce your orbital speed by reflecting light ahead of you. To enter a higher orbit you reflect light behind you.
If they want to leave orbit you reflect light at an extreme angle so it's still behind you but mostly it's away from the star. For interstellar voyages it might be useful to get into a comet like orbit and then accelerate as fast as you can on the last trip out of the system. (This assumes your only using the sun if you have a laser pushing you out of the system then it may not be needed.)
If 300$ is stopping development then there are other major problems.
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The cost of employing a good developer is well over 120k/year. Wages + Benefits + SS + office space + PC +
Now if your talking about a true startup then sure software costs can seem vary important but every business has startup costs. One of the first things I would tell any startup is BUY PHOTOSHOP! Why? Well in the end the reason why your company succeeds or fails will come down to efficiency. It's easy to spend more time trying to figure out if you can get buy with cheep stuff than the cost of buying the best product. This does not mean you should buy 1000$ office chairs, but when it comes to your tools buying the "best" is going to be worth it.
I have written simple web hosting software. And if the only packages out there cost 1000+$ I would have easly sold what I wrote for say 5$ a copy so there would have been "cheep" web hosting solutions out there.
One cost of opensource software is the reduction in such projects. Yes most software costs losts of cash now but that's because the only people left willing to pay for software are company's who don't realy care if it costs 100$ or 5$ is about the same when your paying the guy using it 30$ an hour. With Pearl on the market there is not enough room left for somone to make cheep software that does about the same thing.